1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scene switching point detector, a scene switching point detecting method, a recording apparatus, an event generator, an event generating method, a reproducing apparatus, and a computer program that are suitably applied to a DVD recorder, an HD recorder, and the like that record and reproduce video signals.
More particularly, the present invention relates to a scene switching point detector and the like that can detect scene switching points at appropriate intervals by setting each of target frames at every fixed time of an input video signal as a similarity calculating frame in order, calculating backward similarity on the basis of the similarity calculation frame and feature information of a predetermined number of target frames located before the similarity calculation frame, calculating forward similarity on the basis of the similarity calculation frame and feature information of a predetermined number of the target frames located after the similarity calculation frame, and detecting the target frame forming a scene switching point on the basis of the backward similarity and the forward similarity of each of the target frames.
The present invention also relates to an event generator and the like that can satisfactorily generate an event by setting each of scene switching points, which are obtained from information concerning scene switching points in plural systems, as an event candidate point and selecting, on the basis of a score of each of event candidate points calculated on the basis of the information concerning the scene switching points in the plural systems, a predetermined point to be set as an event.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, when a video signal related to a television broadcast, a video signal imaged by a video camera, or the like is recorded by a DVD recorder, an HD recorder, or the like, it is conceivable to detect scene switching points, record information concerning the scene switching points in association with the video signal, and use the information as information concerning a reproduction skip position for checking contents or searching for an editing point (see, for example, JP-A-2002-27411).
In the past, as a method of detecting scene switching points, there have been proposed various methods such as a method of analyzing a video signal to detect scene switching points and a method of analyzing a sound signal recorded in association with a video signal to detect scene switching points.